


Lydia Goes To College To Get More Knowledge

by Feeling_Super_Super_Super



Category: Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Lydia is a Lesbian, also it's important to note that i've never actually consumed a piece of Addams Family media, and will be fleshing out their characters in future chapters, barbara is in this i swear she appears in chapter two, btw this is all musical characters, but it's not derogatory and it's a mean girls quote, but oh well she's only in this bc lydia needs a gf, i absolutely adore andrew and james, i might explore that in backstory, i might not, part 1284964 of amélie stages philosophical debates through her characters, she doesn't need to be more than an oc, so i have no idea how ooc wendy is, the events of the musical happened minus the maitlands, tw: w slur
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:35:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22187953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feeling_Super_Super_Super/pseuds/Feeling_Super_Super_Super
Summary: Lydia got a scholarship to go to college with her girlfriend and her ghostly roommate and makes some new friends on the way.
Relationships: Adam Maitland/Barbara Maitland, Andrew (Original Character)/James (Original Character), Beetlejuice & Lydia Deetz, Lydia Deetz & Andrew & James, Wednesday Addams/Lydia Deetz
Comments: 7
Kudos: 35





	Lydia Goes To College To Get More Knowledge

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone, this is my first time posting on here! So sorry if I make any etiquette mistakes or tag badly or anything uwu.
> 
> I'm going back to school in a few days so I don't know how that will affect my writing speed, but I'll try and update about once a week and eventually settle into a regular routine.

“Living up to your name, are you?” Lydia laughed as she swung down the bannister into the cramped kitchen.

Beetlejuice looked up, an insect’s head hanging out of his mouth, and waved at his young friend. “Want one?”

Making a show of retching at his suggestion, she said no, and added, “Toss me a coke, would you?” Opening the door with her right hand, she caught the can in her left and slipped it into her pocket, substituting it for her phone. “You coming?”

Beetlejuice nodded, tore the hapless insect in half with his teeth and spat the head into the sink. “In a sec, I just wanna have a little bit of my own coke, if you know what I mean…”

Lydia scowled and grabbed his hand. “No! You know what Dad and Delia said about drugs. We’re gonna be late for class as it is, now let’s get moving.”

Amidst groans from Beetlejuice and what she could swear was purposely making his body heavier as he slumped into his seat, she managed to yank him through the door and into the hallway, grabbing her coat and her purse as she exited into the corridor.

As they made their way downstairs, passing and wordlessly nodding at the other harried students, Lydia wondered just what they would think of this strange pair – a skinny goth who looked like she was barely fourteen and certainly didn’t belong in college, dragging a man behind her who was twice her age and hadn’t brushed his hair, ironed his shirt or even bothered to wipe the insect blood off his face. She bent him down and pressed a handkerchief into his hand.

“Beej, we’re in public now, and you have to at least pretend you care about your appearance,” she told him sternly. “We can’t do anything about —” She gestured at his hair and clothes “— that, but you can at least try and clean up your face.”

He began to whine again, but was silenced by a glare from Lydia, and sheepishly dabbed at the bloodstains on his face.

Lydia snatched the handkerchief off him again when they reached the bottom of the stairs, and stopped Beetlejuice with a wave of her hand. “Hold on a second, I need to get some money out,” she said, fishing through her purse. “Shit, I think I left my credit card upstairs. Did you lock up behind us?”

“I can’t remember,” Beetlejuice replied.

“Helpful,” Lydia scoffed under her breath.

“Oh it’s fine, I can just go check.” He detached his head from his body and threw it up through the ceiling. Lydia stared at his now headless body as she listened to the horrified shrieks coming from above her head, until Beetlejuice’s head returned to his body a few moments later, panting.

“What was our room number again? I aimed badly.”

Lydia sighed loudly and told him, “208. It’s up and to the left.”

“Thanks babe,” he winked, and lobbed his head slightly further to the left this time. “Alley-oop!”

Two older guys walked up to Lydia and pointed at Beetlejuice’s quickly-disappearing head. “That’s amazing, how did he do that?” asked the one on the right.

Lydia shrugged. “He’s a film major, he does this kind of stuff. I don’t ask questions, my job is just to follow behind and make sure he doesn’t kill anyone. So what are you guys studying?”

“Biochemistry, pre-med. I’m a sophomore,” said the boy’s friend. “My boyfriend is a musician,” he added.

A grin quickly spread across her face before she was able to suppress it. “Boyfriend?”

The musician nodded. He had deep blue eyes, contrasting with his boyfriend’s hazel, and he blushed with each word the other spoke. It was rather cute, she thought.

Lydia turned back to the first boy and said, “I’m chem too.”

“You look a little young to be in college. You’re a freshman, right?”

“Yeah, I got a scholarship like a year and a half ago cause I aced this national test thingy — they said I could just cash in whenever, and I would have had a really bitchy teacher this year if I’d stayed in high school, and my girlfriend was offered a scholarship as well so we decided to go together. Chemistry Olympiad, I think the test was called? I spent a week doing nothing but revise for it, to distract from my mom’s death a few weeks earlier.”

The musician’s brow furrowed and he said, “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

Lydia smiled. “It was a while ago, you don’t need to apologise. But yeah, it messed me up kinda badly, and my sleep schedule went to shit for, like, a year. Hey, fun fact, in the week I was practising for the Olympiad, I had more cups of coffee than minutes of sleep. But I got ninety six percent on it, at least. I attempted suicide when I found out the result, but that’s another story and oh look Beej’s head is back!”

Beetlejuice had indeed returned, and looked at the boys with fascination. “Lydia, darling, are we oversharing again?” he asked, his voice like syrup. “Let’s not bother these poor, beautiful boys any more, shall we?”

Lydia elbowed him. “Did I lock the door or not? And give me that,” she said sharply, snatching her credit card out of his hands.

“Yes,” Beetlejuice replied. “You could thank me by the way,” he added, grumbling under his breath.

Lydia stuck out her tongue at him and he responded with a sneer.

“Uh, you weren’t bothering us,” the musician cut in. “I thought it was interesting. My name’s Andrew, by the way, and he’s James. Your friend called you Lydia?”

She nodded.

“It’s a pretty name, one of my favourite Persian satrapies. Your friend isn’t called Croesus, is he?”

Beetlejuice stared blankly at him. “My name’s Betelgeuse, asshole.”

James hit his boyfriend lightly on the arm. “Stop scaring the kid with your weird history knowledge,” he laughed. “Hey, is that a tattoo?” he added, pointing at an ink pattern peeking out from the top of her shirt.

Lydia nodded. “Yeah, do you wanna see it?”

Andrew and James said they did, and Betelgeuse vehemently agreed.

“Shut up Beej, you were there when I got it,” she replied playfully, and pulled her shirt down to expose her neck. “It’s to cover up hanging scars. The week after Thanksgiving… wasn’t fun. It was my mom’s favourite – she loved cooking dinner for my whole extended family. But after she died, her parents and sisters stopped coming, and…”

She trailed off, biting back tears. “So anyway, Beej took me to a tattoo parlour for a Christmas present, to cheer me up.”

Andrew chuckled again. “Ah yes, spending five hours having needles painfully jabbed into the skin of my neck is, of course, my favourite way to feel better after having attempted suicide.”

“Listen, man,” Lydia replied, also chuckling, “my brain is weird. Even I don’t know why it does half the stuff it does.”

“Now that I can empathise with. You know, I once woke up at three in the morning and threatened to slit James’s throat on the spot if he didn’t agree to teach me to do this weird stencil art technique his dad taught him.”

Giggling, Lydia turned to James and asked, “Did you?”

“Well, I tried, but he stopped me halfway through explaining it, passed out, and woke up three hours later with no memory of the damn thing.”

“Oh, Beej has done that a couple times,” she responded, nodding knowingly. “The curse of sharing a room.”

Beetlejuice looked at Lydia. “When have I ever threatened you into teaching me stencil art?”

“Not that specifically, but you’ve woken me up to do stupid shit like watch you throw my stuff out of the window while Dad and Delia were in the garden, and then magically developed amnesia the next morning,” she replied.

“Well, I think I get excused for that on the grounds that it was fucking hilarious.”

She flicked her tongue at him, then her eyes widened and she said, “Wait, you did know about that! You _asshole_ , Dad grounded me for a week after that!”

Beetlejuice laughed triumphantly, and she punched him in the arm. “Fuck you, man,” she said, laughing back.

Andrew coughed politely, and Lydia looked back at him, a look of horror on her face. “Oh god, sorry, you’re still here. I’m so sorry, I forgot, I didn’t mean any of —”

“It’s alright,” he said with a chuckle. “It’s entertaining, honestly. I have to say, it’s pretty obvious you’re a film major, Beej.”

Slowly, Beetlejuice turned to face Lydia, and said, with a furious glare and his voice rising dramatically, “You told them I was a fucking _film major_? I have never been more offended. You know that a film major stole my wife and murdered my mother!”

Andrew and James looked awkwardly between themselves, while Lydia stared apathetically at him and deadpanned, “Beej, you hate your mother. And she’s still alive - or, close enough.”

Kicking at the floor, Beetlejuice grumbled and said, “I know, but a film major still killed her.”

“Are we supposed to understand what’s going on here?” Andrew cut in with a laugh. “Because I’m cool with just watching and guessing the plot in my own time, but I’d quite like to know beforehand, generally speaking.”

Lydia laughed and said, “Sorry, it’s – it’s a really long story, and we’ve gotta head to class, if that’s alright. I’ll catch up with you later though, I’m on the third floor.”

“Sure,” James replied, “what class have you got?”

“Philosophy, with - hold on, let me check.” She brought her phone quickly out of her pocket and went to the calendar app. “Professor Maitland, apparently. Do you know him?”

“Yeah, I had him last year,” he chuckled. “He’s relatively chill, especially if you’re younger. In fact, if you’ve got the 8:30, I think I’m in your class too.”

“Really?”

“Mhm, first period, room W14 in West Block,” he nodded, reading from a paper timetable. “Is that you as well?”

“Yeah, I think so. Not sure about room, but my girlfriend has the directions, she’s got a class in the same corridor apparently - shit, four missed calls. Sorry, I forgot she wanted to meet me ten minutes ago. I’d better go, I’ll see you in class then!”

Andrew waved goodbye and James followed her and Beetlejuice as far as the door, then turned left and headed down past the quickly-filling row of cars. Lydia dragged Beetlejuice the opposite direction, towards where her girlfriend was sitting in the front seat of her car, arms crossed, letting her sunglasses fall disdainfully down her nose. 

“Wendy, I’m so sorry, these two boys came up to me and we started talking about stuff and I completely forgot I was supposed to meet you here and will you please forgive me and not refuse to give me coffee?”

Wendy pursed her lips and said, “I’ll think about it. As long as you give me a kiss and keep being cute.”

“Now that I can do,” laughed Lydia. She slid into the passenger seat and pecked her girlfriend on the cheek. “Coffee?”

“Sure, let me just pour in the milk and sugar like you prefer – oh, and I got you decaf.”

“Come on, don’t be mean,” she pleaded, lightly punching her in the arm. “Your makeup looks beautiful today,” she added after a pause.

“Thanks, babe, I used all your eyeliner up. You’re gonna have to buy more.”

“Eh, I’ll just get Beej to steal it,” she said, waving the thought away as she took the drink. She took a sip of the hot beverage, then spat it out in disgust, spraying it across the dashboard of the car.

“You did get me decaf!” she cried.

Wendy giggled. “Don’t worry, that’s Betelgeuse’s, yours is here.”

Ignoring Beetlejuice’s indignant cry from the back seat, she passed a second cup to a sulking Lydia, who pouted and said, “Boo, you whore.”

She pulled out of her parking spot and cruised towards the university. Lydia was still despondent, but had cheered up a little at the taste of caffeine, while Beetlejuice had joined Lydia in her sulk, having grumpily said, “Well I don’t want it if Lydia’s touched it,” at the offer of his coffee before reluctantly taking it and quietly sipping on it.

At the entrance to the humanities building, Wendy neatly stepped onto the pavement and moved to let Lydia and Beetlejuice out. Lydia smiled and, showily ruffling the edge of it, asked, “Does my skirt look pretty?”

Wendy looked and, flashing a thinking face, mused, “Needs more black.” When Lydia resumed her pout and made a noise that made it clear she was planning to keep it, she relented and laughed, “It looks beautiful, darling.”

As they walked inside and approached her classroom, Lydia brought her smile back and kissed her girlfriend on the cheek as a way of saying thanks.

When they entered the lecture hall, the seats were nearly filled up and the professor, a man about Beetlejuice’s age in a plaid shirt and leather jacket with a pair of black glasses falling down his nose, was sitting at a mahogany desk, sipping at a cup of Starbucks coffee. “Hurry up, people,” he said to the students streaming through the door. “You’re skirting it rather close here.”

Lydia murmured an apology under her breath, and was met with a sharp jab in the ribs from Beetlejuice. “Ow! What was that for?” she asked.

As the bell on the clock tower in the nearby chapel rang for eight o’clock, the professor stood up and, taking a piece of chalk from his desk, went over to the blackboard and started writing at the top. 

“My name is Professor Maitland,” he said, narrating as he wrote, “and I will be your philosophy professor for the duration of your course. Today we will be starting this semester’s module: Evolutionary Morality.” He placed the chalk down on his desk and turned to face the class. “To put it simply, evolutionary morality is the study of how, in evolutionary terms, the human brain naturally develops and utilises a sense of ethics. How it helped us to survive historically and how it helps us now, and whether it is an innate feature of our species’ minds, or whether, like riding a bicycle or speaking a language, it is a learned trait.”

While Professor Maitland - to whom Lydia had taken a liking as soon as she saw that he was drinking coffee - was speaking, Beetlejuice whispered in Lydia’s ear, “First rule of being late for things - don’t apologise for being late unless you’re going to be punished. If he didn’t see you, all you’re doing is risking the chance he notices us and changes his mind - and he probably didn’t even hear you apologise, so there was no point irregardless.”

“Well,” Lydia responded crossly, “excuse me for being polite.”

Suddenly the professor turned towards them, and said, “What a wonderfully fortunate segue into today’s lesson! Could you repeat what you were saying for the class, please?”

Lydia gulped and asked, “M-me? Do I– do I have to?”

The professor shook his head, smiling kindly at the girl. “If you really don’t want to I won’t force you, but it’s a perfect example of today’s topic, much better than anything I could come up with. Are you okay to talk in front of the class?”

Lydia looked nervously at him, and was fidgeting with her shirt collar, trying to think of a way to avoid coming to the front of the classroom, when Wendy kissed her on the cheek and shoved past Beetlejuice, coming to stand directly in front of Professor Maitland.

“Lydia apologised under her breath for being late, then Lawrence —”

“Don’t call me that,” Beetlejuice interrupted, muttering crossly.

“Lawrence,” Wendy repeated, enunciating each syllable of his name clearly as she shot him an icy stare, “posited that such an action was worth neither the fruitless expense of energy it required nor the possibility that it would increase the risk that you notice them, single them out for further or indeed any punishment, and thereby that its effect on your opinion of them and on their total quantity of punishment would be a net negative.”

Professor Maitland adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat. “Well, thank you - I don’t think I have your name?”

“Wendy Addams,” Lydia coughed quietly. 

“Much obliged, Miss Deetz. And, as I was saying, thank you, Wendy, for that excellently eloquent explanation of the problem we’re looking at. Are you - are you attending this class?” he added, looking up at her. “I don’t remember seeing you on my register.”

“Nope, I’m just here to drop off my girlfriend,” Wendy replied cheerfully, giving Lydia another kiss on the cheek as she passed her. “I’m going to go thirst over war criminals now, I’ll be back to pick you up at 10, okay?”

“Sure, have fun being probably a lot smarter than me,” Lydia responded. 

“I will,” she whispered in her girlfriend’s ear and left the room.

When she had left, Beetlejuice stepped towards the professor and said, “I feel like I should warn you in advance, she is twice as articulate as both of us combined. Compared to her, debating with us will feel like teaching five-year-olds, and it will likely take years off your life.”

“Uh, speak for yourself, asshole,” Lydia said, playfully jabbing Beetlejuice in the ribs. “I can debate just fine, I wasn’t in the damn debate team last year for nothing.”

“Ahem.” Professor Maitland interrupted their conversation with a deliberate cough, and turned back to the class, who was waiting expectantly. “We had better start the lesson now - you two can sit down.”

Lydia nodded and made for the nearest open seats, between two pairs of boys on the third row. Beetlejuice dutifully followed. She looked to her left and saw with surprise that her neighbour was a gratifyingly familiar face: James, the boy she’d met in the foyer of her apartment, was idly threading a pencil between his fingers, a small leather-bound booklet on the bench in front of him. She waved shyly at him and he flashed her a grin in response. 

“Hey, Lydia! God, I can’t believe you got called on before the first lesson even started. That must be a new record. I lasted all of last year without having to speak.”

“Well, getting into situations I don’t wanna be in is sort of my speciality, especially if Beej is here to help,” she joked. “Got any notes I can copy?”

He looked quizzically at her and said, “I will once the lesson starts. We should probably focus though, at least to start off with.” 

She nodded and looked back at the professor, who was scrawling notes in quick, messy lines on the board, omitting entire phrases from what he was saying in order to emphasise individual words and keep up with his quick, almost hurried pace of speech, while he verbally outlined the essentials of the debate: “It is, fundamentally, a question of whether or not the human moral compass values a specific code of ethics over what it observes to be the most helpful action on a case-by-case basis. Are there rules we are conditioned to follow above self-preservation or self-interest - and if so, from where do we derive these rules? - and for what, if anything, are we willing to break them?”

Lydia cursed under her breath. “God, he’s said more in the last minute than I’ve said in a week. Are we supposed to get all of that down?”

“I think just the stuff on the board will do,” whispered James, furiously scribbling in his notebook. 

Beetlejuice sneaked a look in Lydia’s direction and, grinning, said, “I think the lesson to be learned here is bring a laptop.”

“Oh, fuck off,” she responded, “as if you thought of that before you sat down. It’s not my fault I can’t summon shit out of thin air. Hey - are you using Microsoft Word?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You know you can turn on speech-to-text and it will just transcribe everything he says. Press ALT, then F4.”

He glanced at Lydia and then at James, who met his look with a shrug. “I don’t trust you,” he said warily. “I’m saving first.”

“Ugh, ruin the fun, why don’t you? Okay, whatever, there’s no point now. Continue typing on your stupid laptop and get carpal tunnel in your stupid dead fingers that probably can’t even get carpal tunnel because they’re dead, whatever. I’m gonna pay attention now,” Lydia said, displaying her usual feigned irritation.

She began to write on a leaf of paper generously lent by James, copying down some of what he said and adding question marks and neat, cramped notes of her own, asserting flaws in the professor’s reasoning and questioning the integrity of his logic. 

Twice, she put her hand up to oppose a point he made, and he engaged her in short but spirited debate. Once, Beetlejuice did the same to correct some grammar - wrongly, and embarrassingly corrected by Lydia. James dutifully copied from the board, paraphrasing only where he felt it strictly necessary, and never speaking.

By the end of the lecture, Lydia had filled both sides of six of James’s pages and James had filled up most of the rest. The blackboard had been erased many times over and was still filled with flowing, overlapping, messily arranged diagrams with shakily written labels and accompanying text which highlighted and compressed the details of Professor Maitland’s lecture and the contributions of the class.

When the bell rang, Beetlejuice, shaking the pins and needles out of his hands, led the way out of the hall and made an excited beeline for the nearest vending machine, begging Lydia to insert a dollar. She reluctantly complied and offered to retrieve his chocolate bar, then ran off with it as soon as it came through the slot, gleefully shouting, “I paid for it so it’s mine!” behind her.

She stumbled into Wendy as the girl came out of her classroom, and grabbed her by the arm, dragging her quickly away from Beetlejuice, who was standing petulantly by the vending machine, holding his middle finger up at them.

“What are we doing?” Wendy asked as they hurtled towards her car.

“Stealing from Beej and bolting,” Lydia panted in response.

She nodded and kept running.

When they got to the car, Lydia turned round, saw that Beetlejuice had finally started to give chase, and threw herself and Wendy into the car.

“Drive, quick, before he gets here,” she instructed Wendy, still out of breath.

“What did you steal?”

“Chocolate. Want some?” She held it out for Wendy and she took a bite, not taking her hands off the steering wheel.

“Did you like, straight up just steal it off of him?” she asked through a mouthful of chocolate.

Lydia shook her head, laughing. “No, but he got me to pay for it because he’s broke, so I thought fuck it, I paid for it and I’m hungry, and took it - next time maybe he’ll learn not to borrow from me. Or let me get to the thing he’s buying with my money before he does.”

“How was the lecture?” Wendy asked.

“It was pretty good. I’ve got like a stack and a half of notes I’m gonna have to read through tonight. It was mostly him asking questions to the audience, then some random person replies and he debates with them for like five minutes, then he summarises what they said on the board and says ‘remember, you should always be looking to come to your own conclusion even if you’re not involved in the debate’ or something. We’re going to have to write an essay on this starting next week.”

“What’s your opinion going to be?”

Lydia bit her lip and said, “Something like, ‘we do good things because we’re good people, and if you think too hard into it then you’re missing the point - kindness is, or at least should be, our immediate reaction to everything.’”

“That’s very sweet,” Wendy replied, kissing her on the cheek.

“Thank you,” Lydia said, a blush spreading across her face, “but it’s not sweet, just common sense. Life sucks too much for us to suck as well, you know?”

Wendy lifted Lydia’s chin with the tip of her finger, and rested on her nose, looking into her eyes. “That’s definitely not common sense, babe, but it’s adorable that you think it should be – if everybody were as kind as you the world would be a much better place,” she whispered softly.


End file.
